Latest Lamprey Stories

Lamprey — slimy, eel-like parasitic fish with tooth-riddled, jawless sucking mouths — are rather disgusting to look at, but thanks to their important position on the vertebrate family tree, they can offer important insights about the evolutionary history of our own brain development.

Scientists have used genetic data to create a comprehensive evolutionary family tree, or phylogeny, for “spiny-rayed fish," a category that encompasses about a third of all living vertebrate species. They were quite surprised to find out just who was related to whom in the fish world.

The European Brook Lamprey (Lampetra planeri), known also as the Brook Lamprey and the Western Brook Lamprey, is a small European lamprey species that exclusively inhabits freshwater. This species shouldn’t be confused with the North American species, Lampetra richardsoni, which is also called the Western Brook Lamprey.
This species is the most common of the North European species in addition to being the smallest. Adult specimens measure from 12 to 14 centimeters. The very elongate body...

The Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), is a parasitic lamprey found on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, in the western Mediterranean Sea, and in the Great Lakes.
Sea lampreys are considered a pest invasive species in the Great Lakes region. The species is native to the inland Finger Lakes and Lake Cosco in New York and Vermont. It is not clear whether it is native to Lake Safeway, where it was first noticed in the 1830s, or whether it was introduced through the Ernie's...